Start a One-Person-Business with Zero Experience

This letter builds upon my previous one, you can read it here.

2 Paths To Start A One-Person Business With Zero Experience

The biggest killer is that people don’t believe that business is for them, or that they don’t have enough experience.

First, stop thinking of business as anything more than an exchange of value. You get something useful, I get something useful. If you want to truly make a dent in a world that revolves around money, drop your noble charity act. Acting selfless to feel good about yourself is just another version of selfishness.

If you’ve helped your friends or family with any topic that you’ve ever learned about in your life, you have enough experience.

Even more, how do you think you gain experience?

I’ll tell you one thing, you don’t gain experience without stepping into the arena. You gain experience by practicing your skills in a real-world setting.

If a freelancer can reach out to clients with zero experience (to gain experience) in exchange for money, why can’t you post something valuable online without expecting anything in return?

Make it make sense.

Your imposter syndrome is self-deception.

Here are the 2 paths you can take:

Path 1) Skill Based

This is the most common route that people tell you to take.

1. Learn a skill

2. Teach the skill

3. Sell the skill

This is great, but as I said, you don’t want to end up one-dimensional. You don’t want to be a slave to client work that can’t be scaled. You don’t want to pursue something else with absolutely nothing to show for it. It happens all the time. Freelancers earn an income through cold email and referrals, and when human nature kicks into play and you want to change direction, you are starting from scratch all over again.

Build an audience of diverse, yet connected interests.

Path 2) Development Based

This second route is more my speed.

It’s based around the 4 eternal markets.

The 4 eternal markets are where burning, profitable problems exist. They are where people have lofty goals that you can help them achieve.

• Health

• Wealth

• Relationships

• Happiness

Path 1 only pays attention to wealth. Marketable skills to help people make more money. By default, you build a one-dimensional brand.

With path 2, you quite literally pursue your own goals in life (brand), solve your problems as you are pursuing those goals (content), and create a system to help others do the same (offer).

That is how you be yourself, improve yourself, and profit off of yourself.

“But Sujal, I’m just starting out!”

And?

It’s not like you have to write content on “How I made 1 million dollars in 3 days.” Less and less people care about that nowadays. They register it as a scam in their mind.

Branding and content are all about perspective. Or “positioning” in marketing. All you have to do is be honest.

What is going to perform better?

“How I made 1 million dollars in 3 days”

Or

“How I plan to make 1 million dollars in 5 years”

Which one would you click on? Which would you follow? Which would you believe and implement for yourself?

Self-awareness and behaviour change are the great determinants of your brand’s success. Are you aware of how YOU would view your brand or content as an outsider? Are you putting out content that will actually change people’s lives?

Path 3) Both

When you start a one-person business, it is on you to learn the skills necessary to make it work.

You will have to learn how to create a compelling profile photo, banner, designs, persuasive bio and content, landing page, and other software that others don’t know how to use.

And of course, synthesizing, which is the foundational skill for any business success (I’ve been emphasizing this more and more inside my Skool community)

As you talk about your journey towards achieving your goals, you will be learning skills (through direct real-world experience) by building your brand.

Then, you will have skills that you can sell to help other brands if you don’t already have an offer in mind.

Jose Rosado, as an example, made a full time income selling profile banners, then transitioned into web design and made multiple 6 figures. Then transitioned again into digital products. The one person business model favors your personal evolution. That’s what makes you unique from everyone else.

If you don’t see the opportunity, it’s because you aren’t in the arena. The opportunities can’t register in your awareness because you haven’t even stepped through the door.

The 4 Pillars Of A One Person Business

For those that want to do what they want and help the people they can help the most – traditional branding, marketing, content, and offer creation will lead you in the wrong direction.

The personal brand is the most powerful storefront in our times. It builds a human connection.

The traditional business model will have you create a customer avatar based on someone with a profitable problem you can solve.

My way, The Experience Model, turns YOU into the customer avatar.

That way, you can solve your own problems, attract people that are on a similar path as you, and help them do the same.

Another bonus, you don’t have to spend countless hours doing market research to understand what will sell.

All you have to do is become obsessed with achieving a goal, solve problems that arise, and create a system to help others do it faster.

A system is just a step-by-step method for how you would go back and solve that problem quick.

Like climbing the stairs to the first floor and sending an elevator down to help someone up.

You will find the best results helping people 1 level under you.

Bonus - you will learn the most from the same. Your awareness level needs to be similar to be able to register all of the teachings